Volume I Part 34 (1/2)

Bathilde occupied a room that looked on a yard behind the house. It was impossible for her to see from her window anything that took place in the street. But since her mother had been absent, the girl had enjoyed more liberty; so long as she avoided the baths, a place which it would have been imprudent for her to frequent, she was free to range over the whole first floor at her pleasure. Knowing that his daughter was in the house, Landry asked nothing more.

On the day following the Fire of Saint-Jean, Bathilde, although she did not know why, could not keep still. She went in and out, from one room to another, arranging the furniture, or rather disarranging it, in order to have an excuse for putting it to rights again.

In her peregrinations she visited most frequently a room at the front of the house, which Dame Ragonde used as a linen closet; it was the room with the balcony. Bathilde had put aside the curtain and glanced into the street from time to time, without opening the window. She had soon discovered the young seigneur of the preceding night walking back and forth in front of the baths, and stopping frequently to scrutinize the house from top to bottom.

Bathilde had felt the blood rush to her cheeks, although no one could have seen her put aside the curtain. She had left the window, but had returned to it a moment later.

”He is there!” she said to herself, trembling with excitement; ”he is still there! Mon Dieu! why does he keep looking at our house?”

The little innocent guessed well enough why he did it; but there are things which we do not choose to admit at once, even to ourselves, especially when they give us pleasure; we are much less ceremonious with those that make us unhappy.

The next day, Bathilde did not fail to go early to the linen closet; she resumed her manuvres of the day before, and looked into the street after cautiously raising a corner of the curtain.

This lasted four days, during which she saw the handsome cavalier almost always in the street, gazing sadly at the windows, with his hand to his heart, and probably sighing; she did not hear the sigh, but she divined it.

On the fifth day, she no longer had the heart to keep the window closed, and yet she did not wish to appear on the balcony without a reason for going there.

Suddenly she remembered that she had a rosebush in her chamber, where, by the way, it rarely received a ray of sunlight.

She ran instantly to Master Landry and said:

”Father, you know I have a lovely rosebush, which Ambroisine gave me two years ago, on my birthday.”

”Very likely; what then?”

”It is in my room, on the window sill, but I have just noticed that it's dying, the leaves are turning yellow. It's because it doesn't get enough air. The yard is so small, and then the steam from the baths is bad for it, perhaps. I should be awfully sorry if it should die. Will you let me put it on the balcony outside the window of the linen closet? There is nothing there, so it won't be in the way; it will have the sun, and I am sure that it will do better there.”

”Put your rosebush where you please, my child; what hinders you?”

”Oh! thank you, father!”

And Bathilde went away, pleased beyond words. Dame Ragonde would never have allowed her to put a rosebush at a window on the front of the house. A woman would have felt, divined, an intrigue therein. But the old soldier saw nothing but a rosebush.

XXI

LOVE TRAVELS FAST

Bathilde made haste to take advantage of the permission her father had given her.

Before carrying the rosebush to the balcony, she cast a glance at her mirror. Was it coquetry? No. But the daughter of a master bath keeper did not wish to show herself to the eyes of chance pa.s.sers-by without being quite sure that nothing was lacking in her dress.

We know already that for three days the girl did not forget to visit the balcony several times during the day, and even after dark, to make sure that her beautiful rosebush needed nothing. Never was flower more sedulously tended, never were rosebuds examined with such care; and certainly no insect could have found a resting place on their stems, unless it had shown the most determined obstinacy in returning thither.

On the third day, or rather the third evening, Bathilde heard the stone fall on the balcony, where she did not happen to be at the time, although she was always close at hand. She instantly detected the paper wrapped about the stone. Her first impulse was to rush out and pick it up; but she reflected that he who had thrown it must still be in the street, and that, if she picked up his note at once, she would show him that she was there, watching behind the curtain.

See how slyly even the most innocent can act sometimes! La Fontaine tells us _how wit comes to young maids_; for my part, I believe that it is all there as soon as they feel love for a man.

Bathilde waited, therefore, until the evening was well advanced before she stole noiselessly out and picked up the stone and the paper. Then she hastened to her room and locked herself in, to read at her ease that first love letter, which was destined to put the finis.h.i.+ng touch to this turmoil in her heart, and perhaps to cause her much suffering, and which it would have been wiser for her not to read.

But wisdom is often the fruit of experience, and Bathilde had had none.